


Witness Me

by gardnerhill



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Female-Centric, Gen, Saving People Hunting Things, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:35:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The family business – hunting things, saving people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witness Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in a very different version of Season One. Yes, this goes against _Sleepy Hollow_ canon, but given that it’s a stupid-ass canon I’ve elected to ignore it.

Jenny limped into the bar to find her sister already well on her way to drowning her memories. She shook her head at the little glass in Abbie’s hand and went up to the bar, standing and staring.

The bartender was halfway down from her and pouring beer for other patrons; he turned his head when Jenny’s presence made any other reaction impossible. “Jim Beam,” Mills said. “No, the bottle.” She pulled some twenties out of the wallet in her front pocket – the Hessian who’d had it last wouldn’t need it any more – and pushed them on the counter. She took her purchase and a glass of her own over to the round black table and the small black woman with round hunched shoulders.

Jenny refilled Abbie’s glass, who cared what had been in it first, and took a swig straight from the bottle, baring her teeth at the sting in her mouth. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. You know that.”

Abbie Mills nodded, still staring into her glass.

“Crane’s a tough guy. He’s still got some witch protection from Katrina. And if Moloch couldn’t find him for 200 years, he won’t do it in seven either.” Jenny grinned like a shark. “Abbie, it was either you or him. He chose to save you and hide in the Underworld. He fulfills that prophecy, seven years pass, and he comes right back here.”

Abbie smacked one hand on the table and jerked her head up to stare at her sister. “It takes two of us to defeat the Horseman, Jenny! He’ll be trying to find Crane but his soldiers will do Moloch’s work on Earth in the meantime, with only one Witness to hold them back now.”

“Ladies!” a far-too-friendly and far-too-drunk voice bellowed behind them. Jenny winced. “Such lovely women shouldn’t drink alone! Lemme buy you something, come on!”

“Not now…” Abbie murmured, staring at the table, weariness in every line. Which of course the guy trying to chat her up didn’t care about.

 _Perfect timing, asshole. We’re trying to have a conversation here._ “No thank you,” Jenny said clearly instead, knowing what reaction that would cause.

Sure as sunrise. The jovial tone switched immediately to rage. “The hell! What’s a matter, you stuck-up bitches? Too good for me, huh? Who wants your ugly skanky asses anyway!” He was getting closer, louder, and his tone uglier. “Well fuck you bitches, that’s what! You shouldn’t turn down nice guys like me, it could be bad for your health!” Closer. Uglier. “Things could happen to you!”

“No,” Abbie whispered, this time glaring at her sister. Jenny grimaced, but let go of her hunting knife; dammit, Abbie was right, she just wanted to sit and drink here, not get arrested or thrown out.

So, smiling like a shark, Jenny just turned around and looked her assailant in the face. “Things, you say?”

Male Caucasian, approximately mid-forties, 5’8”, brown hair blue eyes, stocky of build, unshaved, sweat-stained flannel work-clothes – and for some reason the uglier and more unwashed these white guys were the more they thought they were a prize a black woman just couldn’t turn down.

And he saw her – saw her tall, lean, magnificent, fresh from battling demons, gashes still bleeding down her face, and the look she gave her opponent in a fight levelled directly into his own eyes.

She watched those blue eyes’ pupils dilate. She said nothing, let her posture speak for her: _I have the blood of witches and soldiers in my veins._ _I’ve killed scarier things than you tonight. You do_ not _want to give me an excuse to make you my next target. Crawl away._

He visibly shrunk. “Fucking bitches.” But it was the whimper of a frightened pup as he moved off.

Jenny had already turned back to her sister, refilling their glasses. Her instincts told her not to take a seat, so she remained standing at the tall table.

Abbie poured back the shot and made a small sound of pain – she’d taken a few blows herself and probably had a sore tooth in there somewhere. “Thanks.”

“What are sisters for?”

She exhaled and set down the glass. “So what do I do now?”

“Wrong pronoun.”

Abbie looked up and saw the same grim look their harasser had gotten – this one not directed at her. “Jenny?”

Fear – the good fear, the kind that kept you alive in a pitched battle – rose up in her and opened her mouth. “Teach me what a Witness has to do, and you’ve got your backup.”

Abbie’s eyes widened. Then she lowered them and shook her head. “It’s not that way. You don’t just learn, it’s in you.”

A lie. That first look had been pure hope, relief, desperate need.

“Who better than we two to Witness? How did all this start in our time?” Jenny glared at the police woman. “Two girls on bicycles. You owe me. We both know that. So where’s the manual?”

Abbie just stared at Jenny.

“Come on, you can’t have followed every prophecy to the letter.” Jenny refilled her glass, starting to feel the fire down to her toes. That was better. “Teach me what to do, and while Crane’s in the Inferno waving a red cape at the big bull we go after the picadors up here.”

Abbie frowned in confusion. Exhaustion, the aftermath of the fight, the shock of being bereft of her new partner, the Jim Beam. She visibly settled on the one thing she could handle right now, the phrase. “Um, that’s not how bullfighting works.”

“It’s how it ought to work, and you know what I meant.” Jenny rested her elbows on the table and grinned at her sister, her chin propped on her fists. “What do you say?”

Abbie looked up, and the reflection of hellfire in her eyes warned Jenny faster than her change of expression or even the sound behind her. Without looking she swung around with one leg and seized the Jim Beam bottle at the same time. She caught just a flash of mad gold light in the eyes as she kicked their harasser in the side of the knee, and his head swung down to make a perfect target for the heavy bottle. She twisted the knife out of his grasp – the more the merrier.

Out the damn door anyway, yelling and crashing behind them. Making their way back through the squad of angry yelling people that was mostly white men to get back to their truck was not an option.

“Do you have it?” Jenny yelled, high-tailing it toward the low black Detroit mountain. Neck-breaker seats but she could hot-wire this one. Windows open, perfect, wouldn’t have to break one.

“Of course!” Abbie pelted past her sister and dove head-first into the driver’s side window as Jennie clambered over the vast expanse of the steel hood. Two male voices behind them amplified their cries and profanity in both volume and pitch – this car was clearly theirs.

“Police business!” Abbie held her shield out the window at the men approaching. “We have monsters to kill! Trust me!”

She tossed the heavy tome to her right. “Jenny, hold the book!” Abbie spun the wheel to avoid hitting the two flannel-clad men closest to them.

Jenny kept her eyes on her work but couldn’t resist one fling at her sibling. “And they locked _me_ up.” Spark spark – the enormous old-school Detroit V8 engine roared to life. “Go, go, go!”

Jenny gripped the old leather-bound Bible that had once been owned by George Washington, mentally ticking off the felonies and misdemeanors they had committed just in the last 5 minutes, let alone the manslaughter from earlier that night. Self-defense – no, better not to get caught, self-defense didn’t work for black women –

One last cry from behind them: “My _car_!”

***

Fate must have been keeping an eye on both of them. Two hours later they were in a Motel 6 and Abbie was bandaging Jenny’s stitched scalp.

“Two Witnesses, this thing says.” Jenny winced a little but turned another page. “We make two.”

Abbie exhaled so hard a swatch of her hair flew away from her face. “Fine! Fine, we’ll try doing this your way. If we don’t get busted for stealing the car.”

Jenny pulled her hoodie over her head to hide the white gauze bandaging. “At least let’s get the license plates off, it’ll slow down identification until we can ditch her for something else.”

…And when they jimmied open the black 1967 Chevrolet Impala’s trunk, they only stared at everything within. Pentagrams and symbols painted on the inside of the trunk lid; guns and machetes and scythes and knives etched with more arcane hieroglyphics.

“Abbie,” Jenny said, examining a shotgun shell full of rock salt. “I don’t think those two guys were garden-variety rednecks.”

Abbie hefted a silver knife. “More Witnesses?”

“Or whatever those two call what they do. But this is definitely designed to take down Moloch’s side of the fight, not ours.”

Abbie twirled the long-barrelled Colt and holstered it with such unconscious mastery that Jenny didn’t breathe a word for fear of breaking the spell or making her sister self-conscious. There was the proof of their mother’s blood, their family’s heritage. More proof in the look she gave her sibling. “Okay. We leave this car where those two can find it again – somewhere close to the bar. But we’re keeping this stuff. We’ll write them a nice thank-you note and leave it on the driver’s seat.”

We _leave the car._ We’re _keeping this stuff._ We’ll _write them…_

Jenny grinned, and shouldered an over-and-under double-barrelled 12-gauge Winchester loaded with NaCl rounds. “Good idea. We could use an arsenal as well as a Bible.”


End file.
